THIS is my new favourite breakfast even though it comes meat-free and naked without a hint of bacon or black pudding.
For £4.50 you get a sourdough toast of your choice, in this case treacle and rye, two runny fried eggs, tomatoes, red peppers, mushrooms and who'd have thought it, avocado. Here is food alchemy folks with all of these multifarious elements getting stuck right in.
What is attractive is the use of historic cereals to bring back forgotten flavours - spelt grain is a speciality. The breads here have great breadth
The result is beautiful, filling and strangely righteous - in a whole-food kind of way. The avocado is a star performer, adding exotic grace and delicacy to the fry-up. The peppers give the ensemble more dash. The free-range, hand-tickled eggs from wander-around-everywhere-and-party-in-the-farmyard hens were delicious.
In fact the breakfast so turned my head I nearly decided to do a Timothy Leary and 'turn on, tune in and drop out'. It seemed appropriate in a left-field operation, just over the road from Whalley Range and just down the road from Chorlton, that turns out to be a veggie cooperative with a vegan slant.
Perhaps homespun is the right word for Uprising Kafe, but aside from still being a work in progress (the washroom area needs investment for instance), the food and drink is anything but amateurish. There's proper cooking here and bags of imagination too.
Another dish, good for breakfast but across the day as well, was the buckwheat pancakes with strawberry and banana cunningly worked into the mix producing a lovely robust end-product. This was then filled with fruit, given a maple-syrup booster and better still, an adorable mixed berry homemade yoghurt that was a real delight.
The home-made cakes are a joy at a bargain £2 a slice and, as I write, we're waiting to see how the pizzas will turn out this evening. But the whole underpinning of this crafty co-op is the sourdough bread. There are several varieties, including the more outlandish such as the aforementioned treacle and rye and also the excellent Camembert.
Uprising bakes in batches of 30 loaves a day using, of course, local and organic produce and, of course, no additives or preservatives. Their bread is utterly delicious. The white sourdough and the wholemeal work a treat and I bet the walnut anise, the beetroot fennel and the olive thyme are just as good. The brewery sourdough using a byproduct of the brewing process from a local micro sounds a winner too. The bread is baked in a small unit in Longford Park, a mile away from Uprising Kafe.
We were served by the excellent Janey who also cooked for us and prepared a mean flat white. Janey was knowledgeable and passionate, a woman clearly in love with the food she prepares. Talk to her if you want advice, especially if you're coeliac, as she'll have the answers. What is particularly attractive about this operation is the use of historic cereals to bring back forgotten flavours - spelt grain is a speciality. The breads here have great breadth - so to speak.
A clever idea on the Uprising website is the Bread Club. This allows people to order weekly bread as well as joining in once a month for a monthly Bake Up event sharing traditional skills. The membership fee is £25 per annum for the first fifty members.
Uprising Kafe is a fine addition to the south-west of the city, three miles from the city centre. It provides distinctive food, produced with skill. Fortunately I live round the corner, but even if you don't I recommend a trip.
You can follow Jonathan Schofield on Twitter @JonathSchofield or connect via Google+
All scored reviews are unannounced, impartial, paid for by Confidential and completely independent of any commerical relationship.
Uprising Kafe, Upper Chorlton Road (close to the junction with Seymour Grove), Old Trafford, Manchester
Rating: 15/20
Food: 8/10 (avocado breakfast 8.5, pancake 8, coffee 7, camembert sourdough 8)
Service: 4/5
Ambience: 3/5
